The 82nd running of the Le Mans 24 Hours was nothing less than a classic, with
Audi's experience shining through to defeat Porsche and Toyota

Some years, we get to the end of this, look back and think how it flew by. Not this time; but in a good way, not in an "Oh, bloody hell, not another hour" way.

I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Le Mans with more twists and frights and uncertainties, but that’s what made it.

It seems a very long time since that awful, shocked silence on Wednesday when Duval crashed the number 1 Audi; and odd how that wasn’t the end of that bit of the story but the beginning. Mercifully Loic was alright, astonishingly Audi rebuilt the car, and poignantly it came close to winning (if you’ve seen the post-accident pictures, can you believe that?).

It also meant a bit of ‘musical drivers’; but that put Oliver Turvey into the Jota seat vacated by Marc Gene who went to Audi to deputise for the recuperating Duval. And from expecting to spend the weekend watching the race on the telly, Turvey is now a Le Mans class winner. As are Jota themselves of course, and very much in the spirit that P2 aims for.

The parity of performance (especially during practice and qualifying) between three extremely disparate hybrid concepts was remarkable; and in no way more so than in the engineers’ ability to deliver the mandatory 30 per cent fuel saving with barely a graze on the essential performance level - without which this wouldn’t be remotely the race that it is.

The well-intended but ill-considered fuel-restriction rules of the mid-seventies ‘energy crisis’ wrecked ‘proper’ endurance racing for a while, as drivers who would sooner walk barefoot across broken glass were obliged to drive like their own grandmothers (or grandfathers; you don’t catch me as easily as that); but on this evidence, these rules, especially when they have been further honed, could take both the relevance and the spectacle of the race to whole new levels, and that would be more the making of it. One thing’s for sure, you’d never think a 1,000bhp Toyota hybrid was all about economy driving.

A massive crowd, somewhere in the region of 263,000 paying customers at first estimate, suggest people still want to watch it, too. Or at least to join in the party – but it certainly doesn’t suggest that many were put off by mistaken ideas of ‘worthy’ regulations.

The ACO and FIA faced up to the safety concerns inevitably triggered by last year’s awful events but did it without throwing the baby out with the bath water. And there may have been new issues this year about standards of driving, especially throughout the preliminaries, but no one pretended there weren’t, and next year’s regime stands to be even more robust.

Nissan’s ZEOD didn’t go far in the race, but the problem that stopped it in the first half hour, ironically, was with its very conventional gearbox, a simple off-the-shelf piece of a complex jigsaw that in all other aspects was anything but unambitious.

And it’s worth saying that, whether the stated targets were the right ones or not, ZEOD did at least deliver them: 300kph on electric power only, and one full lap of the circuit at racing speed ditto. It wouldn’t exist at all if it weren’t for Le Mans open-minded embracing of ‘other’ technologies.

There were reaffirming bits: 16-and-a-bit-year-old Matt McMurry becoming the youngest driver ever to take part in the race – and acquitting himself rather better than some of those twice his age who made such a Horlicks of practice and qualifying. And the whole concept of the Nissan Academy ‘gamer-to-racer’ initiative, that put four young drivers from all around the world in decent seats here, and showed that in Jann Mardenborough in particular (but not alone), it might have discovered a genuine superstar in the making. No, not might.

There were glitches, of course there were: the ‘slow-zone’ alternative (or adjunct) to the safety cars that had comprehensively blighted last year’s race, was as confusing as a flat-pack Eiffel Tower, and potentially a more hazardous solution than the original problem.

And not that it would bother the civilian visitor, but for those working here (photographers in particular) the sheer number of non-combatants in some working areas gets sillier every year, however well-meant in terms of accessibility. You’ll always get the odd one who’ll pee on everybody’s picnic: it’s not just in France where giving a bloke from the council a high-viz jacket and a whistle and turn him into Genghis Khan’s less helpful cousin.

But come on, even I know that that’s nit-picking in the big scheme of things, and Le Mans, the ACO, the FIA, and the vast majority of others involved make all this special. And this year, thanks to people on both sides talking to each other, it was more special than ever.